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Monday, May 26, 2014

Memorial Day-Book to help Veterans and Families Cope with Severe Stress.

My book How to
Cope with Post Trauma Stress: Especially for Veterans, their Families, and
Friends is on Amazon both as a Kindle book and a paper book in time for
Memorial Day. It includes a stress test, relevant information about post-trauma
stress (PTS), twenty steps to recovery, and help for the veteran's families and
friends.

But, you say, memorial day is to honor the soldiers
who have died to protect our freedoms. Yes, you are right. However, I believe that
in remembering with love and appreciation all our heroes who have given their lives,
we must also equally remember all those who have served us and survived. We
cannot separate Memorial Day from Veteran's Day. Except for "the luck of
the draw" the people who died and those who lived are the same, not one
more brave and deserving than the other.

Many soldiers in the last two wars have survived
because of modern medicine. Many, many veterans are coming home physically and
emotionally injured. They are the ones who in the past were the ones who died. As
youhave no doubt heard recently, one of
the problems we are now facing, is that the country is not prepared to receive
and help this many suffering veterans. There are long waiting periods in VA
hospitals and doctor's offices. In the meantime veterans feel hopeless,
deserted, and they are dying because of lack of care here at home instead of in
a war zone overseas. They feel as though nobody cares. And to some extent they
are right.

Because we now have a volunteer army, many people at
home are no longer personally or meaningfully invested in what happens in the
war. They are told to "go out and shop." The news rarely covers what
is happening out on the battlefield, and we don't even see the coffins or wounded
men come home. We forget they exist, or that we are at war. Of course, since
Vietnam, ordinary citizens have learned a lesson they have not forgotten and
that is to thank the veteran's for their service instead of calling them names.

That's great, but do people really see the veterans
and their loved ones as human beings like they are? Can you personally step
into a veteran's shoes and put yourself in her/his place? Or are the veterans
merely "out there," distant from you? Do you know really what they
are going through or would you rather inadvertently close your eyes to their needs
and their suffering? Did you personally know what was going on in the VA? Did
you care when you found out?

So what is the solution? How can we help our
veteran's reintegrate when they come home? Ed Tick in his book War and
the Veteran's Soul: Healing our Nation's Veterans from Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder, calls war a soul pain, a spiritual, and moral injury. Tick gives
a powerful example in his book of how things could be different. He tells the
story of how the Native American's once sent their warriors off to fight for
them and how they reintegrated them.

When the veteran's returned, the entire community
would sit in a circle and gather around them. They would allow their warriors to
truthfully tell their stories of both the "good and bad things" that
happened in battle. The community did not shame or judge them for what the
warriors had done. Instead they shared the warrior's joy, their guilt, and
their grief. After all, the tribe had, as a whole, sent the warriors to fight
to protect them. The entire tribe listened, they held the returning warriors,
and loved and supported them through their time of reintegration (sometimes for
months) until they could stand alone again.

What would happen if we helped our warriors
reintegrate in this way? It is time for everyone, individually, to take
responsibility for our wars and our veterans. We, as a nation (yes, that means
all of us personally) have sent the men and women to war and everyone of us
must take responsibility to reintegrate them into our society, and not just
with money. It means a personal investment in a veteran or veterans that you
can help, love, and support physically and/or emotionally.

This book is my contribution to hurting veterans. If
you know a veteran or family member who could use the help given in this book, please
let them know about How to Cope with Stress after Trauma: Especially for Veterans, their Families and Friends.

Think about what you personally can do to help our
veterans reintegrate and share it with the rest of us this Memorial Day.

4 comments:

Good luck with your book. From what I am reading in the news, our vets and their families need this kind of resource to help them try to make sense of what they have been through. No, I have never walked in a soldier's shoes. I had a brother who served in peace time and friends who served during wars. I am grateful to them and their families for what they gave individually to our country. Thanks for all you do to help them!

The challenge for all of us who stand by and watch helplessly is to think about what we can do. The woman of the Celts had rituals to cool the warriors down when they returned home from war. It is my great hope that your book will help all of us learn to cope with the aftermath of war. I hope every returning soldier, sailor and marine is given a copy with their discharge papers.

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